State Sen. Scott Wiener led Supervisor Connie Chan by about seven points in the latest count for San Francisco’s House seat, and Ms. Chan, whom Nancy Pelosi endorsed, has conceded, though the result will not be official until the election is certified.
For the first time since 1987, San Francisco will send someone other than Nancy Pelosi to the House of Representatives. State Sen. Scott Wiener has won the race for California’s 11th Congressional District, according to the Associated Press, after his opponent, Supervisor Connie Chan, conceded on Wednesday evening.
The count is not finished, and the result is unofficial. In the most recent update posted by the California Secretary of State, at 4:21 p.m. Pacific time on Sunday, Nov. 8, Mr. Wiener had 157,394 votes, or 53.6 percent, to Ms. Chan’s 136,435, or 46.4 percent. The race will become official only after San Francisco’s Department of Elections certifies its count, which it has said may take up to 30 days after Election Day, and the Secretary of State certifies the statewide results.
A concession before the count was done
Ms. Chan did not wait for the last ballots. “After reviewing the results and the ballots remaining to be counted, while we expect the margin to narrow significantly, we do not have a clear path to victory,” she said in a statement on Wednesday, CBS San Francisco reported. “I congratulate Scott Wiener on his election and wish him success in serving San Francisco.”
The margin has narrowed, as she predicted. When she conceded, Mr. Wiener led 55.5 percent to 44.5 percent, or 97,876 votes to 78,594, with an estimated 57 percent of the vote counted, Axios San Francisco reported. The AP had not called the race at that point. Later counts cut his lead to about seven points. CBS News also projected Mr. Wiener the winner, and KQED recorded the race as called at 8:25 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, Nov. 6.
Ms. Chan thanked her supporters and said she would keep organizing around affordability, immigrant rights and workers’ issues, according to Axios. “This election has ended, but our movement and our commitment to one another carries forward,” she said.
Mr. Wiener thanked Ms. Chan for a hard-fought campaign. “I’m deeply grateful for the trust voters have placed in me and I’m ready to get to work for you,” he said in a statement quoted by Axios. “It’s time to deliver a better tomorrow for our city and our country.” He has said he wants to take on housing, health care and transit at the national level.
Pelosi’s candidate, and the other Democrat
The contest was a general election between two Democrats, a product of California’s top-two primary, and KQED described it as the first truly competitive race for the seat in years. It also became an unusual test of the former speaker’s influence at home. Ms. Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco since June 1987 and served as speaker from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023, endorsed Ms. Chan, the District 1 supervisor whose district includes the Richmond District. The Washington Post noted that Mr. Wiener will step into the seat held by the former speaker, who endorsed his opponent.
The returns do not, on their own, explain the outcome. How each candidate fared in individual neighborhoods will not be known in full until the city releases its final, precinct-level statement of the vote.
Mr. Wiener, who represented the Castro and surrounding neighborhoods on the Board of Supervisors before he was elected to the state Senate in 2016, has built his Sacramento record on housing and land-use bills, transit and technology policy. He will be San Francisco’s first openly gay member of Congress, Axios noted.
What happens between now and January
Until certification, the numbers can still move, though Ms. Chan’s concession and the AP call both reflect an expectation that the order of finish will not change. The Secretary of State’s Sunday update reported all 453 precincts in the district, but that refers to where ballots were cast, not to how many of them have been counted; vote-by-mail and provisional ballots continue to be processed after Election Day.
If the result holds, Mr. Wiener would be sworn in with the new Congress on Jan. 3, 2027. He would join a California delegation reshaped by the new House map, which The Inquirer described on Sunday. His move would also open his seat in the state Senate. Under state law, a vacancy in the Legislature is filled by a special election called by the governor, and the timing would depend on when Mr. Wiener leaves the Senate.
For San Francisco’s congressional office, the change is generational. Ms. Pelosi’s nearly four decades in the seat spanned her rise from a rank-and-file member to the first woman to serve as speaker. Mr. Wiener will enter the House as a freshman and begin without her seniority, committee gavels or fundraising network, and with the expectation, voiced in his own statement, that he will deliver for a city whose problems are as local as its housing costs and as national as its federal funding.
The Inquirer will update the count when San Francisco certifies the election.
Beatrix Halloran covers the campaigns, money, ambitions and personalities of Northern California’s congressional delegation, for The Delegation. More from Beatrix Halloran
